Monsoon Shootout first poster: A sinister-looking Nawazuddin Siddiqui will remind you of Raman Raghav 2.0

Monsoon Shootout will release in India on December 15.

Monsoon Shootout poster&nbsp | &nbspPhoto Credit:&nbspTwitter

Nawazuddin Siddiqui has been a popular star for quite some time. Many of his films have their successful run at various festivals, won accolades and awards but one thing they couldn't find was a theatrical release in India.

Some of these movies include Liar's Dice, Dekh India Circus, The Music Teacher, Patang etc are yet to find a distributor, talking about the sad state of affairs of movies in our country. Nawaz himself had once said, “What can I say? All these are films to which I have given my blood sweat and tears. I’ve worked hard and for nominal fees for these, as I believed in these films. They are important films not only to my career but also as works of cinematic brilliance by directors who know their jobs.”

Thankfully, one of his much-delayed movies, Monsoon Shootout has finally managed to get a distributor and a release date on December 15 (clashing with Fukrey Returns). They have also released the first poster of the movie, that has a sinister looking Nawazuddin Siddiqui staring ahead in a rather malevolent manner. His look will remind you of another sinister character he played in last year's Raman Raghav 2.0. The poster also has the movie's main lead, Vijay Varma, who plays a cop. Nawaz, meanwhile, plays a cold-hearted killer in the noir thriller. National Award winning actress Geetanjali Thapa, Neeraj Kabi and Sreejita De also form the supporting cast in the movie.

Monsoon Shootout, directed by debutante Amit Kumar and backed by Anurag Kashyap, was made back in 2013 and was even screened at the Cannes that year, winning rave reviews. We have unearthed a couple of the same here. Here's what The Guardian has to say about the movie - "Perhaps to deliver a corrective to all the solemn and high-minded cinema, first-time film-maker Amit Kumar has arrived in Cannes with a brash exploitation picture, a violent thriller on the tough streets of Mumbai about rule-breaking, bone-breaking cops. But there's also an expected parallel-narrative structure: it's Dirty Harry meets Sliding Doors. It's a moody, broody downbeat drama for most of the time, a rainy noir. But along with the plot trickery, there are some unexpected turns. It's an entertaining popcorn-movie with a twist, for which commercial success is on the cards."

And here's Hollywood Reporter's take on the same - "A cunningly intricate first film from India, Monsoon Shootout combines the best of two worlds – a ferocious Mumbai-cops-and-gangsters drama, and a satisfyingly arty plot that turns in on itself to examine the outcome of three possible choices a rookie cop might make when he confronts a ruthless killer. Lending his strong face to the lead role, Varma projects a good mixture of vulnerability and naivete as well as scripted courage. Most memorable of all is Siddiqui, who is every inch an unstoppable force of nature, and lucky we are that so much of the violence he wreaks happens off-camera. The India-U.K.-Dutch coproduction has an international look in its clean, easily readable images, but it's still so packed with colorful things it's hard to mistake it for anything but Indian."

Let's hope that time hasn't been cruel on Monsoon Shootout and that it will receive the same love in India too as it did at Cannes in 2013.